


Tell Me, Are My Words Worth Less?

by Cheshyr



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Pack Family, Speech impediment
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-07-11
Updated: 2012-07-11
Packaged: 2017-11-09 16:09:55
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,830
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/457397
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cheshyr/pseuds/Cheshyr
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Stiles is proud of his words. He loves to talk and tell and share and speak. And he absolutely, deep in his soul, hates his stutter.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Tell Me, Are My Words Worth Less?

**Author's Note:**

> Second fic. Still un-beta'd. Still not at all season 2 compatible. I still do what I want.

Scott remembers it very clearly, although it would be years before he understood it. He was never able to grasp why it stood out to him, why it stuck in his memory at all.

It was the third week of seventh grade, and Stiles was walking with Scott to the cafeteria, the entire time talking nonstop about the newest case his father was working on, arson or something, when Scott held his hands up, eyes wide as he cut Stiles off mid sentence.

“Dude, slow down. I can barely keep up.”

For a moment, Stiles just stared at him. Then, he cocked his head to the side and said “I think I was born with my tongue on backwards.”

Scott frowned and furrowed his brow, the statement so strange and didn’t sound at all like a joke and Stiles wasn’t laughing or smiling and why did he look so blank and sound so sad?

But before Scott could even open his mouth, Stiles was talking again, rambling on about something else and the questions died on his tongue. He didn’t forget though, and no matter how many times he reflected and thought about it, he still never understood.

~

Stiles had a stutter for as long as he could remember. Ever since he began talking, he would stutter and stumble over his words, all the things that were so clear in his head would get mangled in his mouth. His parents took him to a doctor when he was two, but the stiff looking man in the white coat seemed unconcerned. He told the Stilinski’s that their son would most likely grow out of it and if not he would recommend some speech therapists. 

So while the sheriff would occasionally look a little lost and his wife would sometimes have to pause to work out what had been said when Stiles spoke, they lived around it and life went on. Until Stiles started preschool and came home crying because no one else in class stuttered and everyone had laughed when the teacher called on him and at recess no one would talk to him except to call him names. Between the hiccupping and the endless stream of repetitious syllables, it took the elder Stilinskis half an hour to figure this out. 

After that, Stiles didn’t talk for three days. The sheriff suggested speech therapy, but his wife wanted to wait, wanted to give him a little longer. Wanted to try something first. Which was how she found herself in her son’s room, tucking him in and sitting beside him to stroke his hair.

“Maybe you just need to not think about what you’re saying. Here,” she stood and walked over to the small bookshelf across the room, pulling out a thin book worn with use. She returned to the bed and sat so that she could look into Stiles’ face, his eyes wide and sad. She smiled warmly at him, “I’ve read you this story at least a bazillion times,” Stiles giggled softly, “so why don’t you tell me about it? Don’t think too hard about what you’re going to say. Just get out as much as you can, alright?”

After a moment, the boy nodded. He took a deep breath, and then spoke as fast as he could, “Little red riding hood was v-v-visiting-“ he stopped, his eyes welling with tears. 

At the sight, his mother immediately flailed slightly, “No, no, no! Don’t cry! You did great! Did you see how much you said? You did so well.” She wrapped her arms around him, rocking him slightly as she kissed the top of his head, “You did so good. I’m so proud of you.” She smiled when she felt her son return the hug. “I could listen to you talk all day.”

~

Stiles still refused to talk at school, a fact that was brought to his parents’ attention at several parent-teacher conferences. But the Stilinski’s always smiled and nodded, because at home, Stiles was doing better. 

It had become a game between him and his mother to tell stories as fast as they could. When he got in the car after school she would tell him that he had until they got home to tell her all about his day, and at night they took turns telling fairytales as fast as they could, sometimes timing themselves to see who was faster. The poor sheriff often found himself trying desperately to understand his wife and son, who were perfecting speed speech. Stiles had learned not to stop talking, even if he slipped and stuttered, and slowly the stutters began to fade until he was five years old and the stutter was gone.

~

When Stiles is eight, he and his mother are driving home from school, playing their game like they have for years.

“…and the teacher said that we would have to work in partners but we couldn’t choose them ourselves they were assigned and I got assigned with Lydia! Can you believe it? So now I get to sit next to her every day for two whole weeks! Isn’t that awesome?”

His mother laughs, shaking her head fondly and reaching over with one hand to run her fingers through her son’s spikey hair as they drove through the intersection. “Oh, honey-“

And then the van hit them.

~

Mrs. Stilinski was not killed on impact, but she was dead on arrival. 

Stiles had a broken arm, a minor concussion, and numerous cuts and bruises. The driver of the van that had T-boned them had been killed instantly, his last breath still reeking of beer. When the ambulance arrived, Stiles was still in the passenger seat and he was screaming at the top of his lungs. He wasn’t doing anything, not struggling to escape the carnage, not fighting to move, not forming words, not even crying, really. He sat in the seat completely still, his eyes clenched shut and his head angled slightly up like a dog to the moon, and he screamed. His mother was not killed on impact.

~

Sheriff Stilinski could not tell you how long Stiles was silent. If he went back, looked at a calendar and calculated the days, he would find that it had been over a month, but he didn’t remember most of it. The first week was a haze of pain and grief, and the next few were a haze of any alcohol he could get his hands on. By the time he managed to pull himself out of his hole, Stiles was deep in his own. 

After a week of noticing the silence, the sheriff began actively trying to engage his son, talking to him, telling him about his day, about the case he was working on, about the annoying relatives who didn’t know how much they weren’t helping. But Stiles stayed silent.

Finally, they were sitting at the dinner table, each staring at their respective plates of food solemnly, and the elder looked up and pleaded with his son.

“Stiles, kiddo… say something. Please? Anything at all I just… please say something…”

Looking up, the sheriff didn’t think he’d ever seen his son look so miserable. The eight-year-old stared for a moment, looking like he was bracing himself, before finally taking a deep breath.

“I-I-I-“ His breath hitched and his eyes watered. “C-c-c-c-c-c-c-…” He shut his eyes as hard as he could, his face flushing with shame. Sheriff Stilinski felt his heart break.

“Stiles….” He reached out for his son’s hand but Stiles abruptly bolted, sprinting out of the kitchen and up the stairs to his bedroom. 

For almost ten minutes, the sheriff sat in his chair, his arm half outstretched on the table towards the space in front of him. He had no idea what to do. How to grieve, how to help his son grieve. His eyes flickered towards the liquor cabinet. He wondered how long he would have to leave his son alone before he figured it out.

Guilt welled in his heart, and in seconds he was standing and running up the stairs after Stiles. Late, but hopefully not too late.

At first glance, the room was empty. There was clutter on the surface of his desk and night stand, but the floor of Stiles’ room was completely clear. For a split second the sheriff felt panic grip his chest as he thought of Stiles running away, but then the sound of harsh, labored breathing reached his ears. He quickly followed it to the closet door, which he threw open to reveal his son, curled up on the floor with one arm wrapped around his knees and another clutching at his chest as he breathed heavily. The elder Stilinski felt about three inches tall when he thought of Stiles being like this for the past ten minutes while he tried to pull himself together. And he was supposed to be the adult.

Without hesitating, the sheriff dropped to the floor, maneuvering their two bodies until Stiles was sitting on his lap, rubbing soothing circles onto the boy’s back. If anything, it only got worse, sobs mixing with the shallow breaths.

“Shhh, shhhh…” The father tried to calm his son, rocking him gently.

“I-I-I-I… c-c-can’t…” 

“Shhh, I know, it’s okay. Just breath, alright? Breath with me, okay. In, and out. In… out…” This continued until Stiles was finally able to take in a shaky breath and feel it reach his lungs. 

Stiles turned and hid his face in his father’s shoulder. “S-s-s-s-sorry dad…”

Closing his eyes, Sheriff Stilinski buried his nose his Stiles’ hair, his tears falling freely. He wasn’t sure how much of his heart was left to break.

“It’s okay. We’re okay, kid. We’ll be okay.”

~

They don’t talk about her. The sheriff can’t say whether it’s healthy or not, but they cope. Stiles eventually starts talking again, and after about a month and a half his stutter goes away again, and the panic attacks go with it. He talks fast, and continuously, and his father thinks it is half natural and half honoring his mother’s memory. 

As time goes on, the sheriff sees more and more of the old Stiles, the happy, the curious, the hyperactive mass of positive energy and it is only after a parent teacher conference, when Stiles’ fourth grade teacher mentions that Stiles often looks sad, that he realized that it is probably for his benefit. When he gets home, Stiles asks him how it went, smiling and talking about how the teacher probably loves him because of course he’s the smartest next to Lydia even if he does find most of the information boring. The sheriff smiles and wordlessly embraces his son. For a moment Stiles is stunned, still and stiff in his arms. When he finally returns the hug, his father smiles and says he loves him before pulling away and asking what he wanted for dinner.

After that, Stiles’ happiness seems a little less fake, and the sheriff smiles more too.

~

When Stiles is ten he is diagnosed with ADHD. He tells his dad that he is fine, but when they get home he goes into his room, shuts the door, and cries. He wonders how many ways one person can be broken. He wonders how else he is wrong.

~

He meets Scott in sixth grade. Scott is a little quiet, and kind of dorky, and Stiles is a little loud and kind of dorky, so they fit nicely together. Stiles had never been very good at making friends, always too nervous about everything wrong with him, too busy worrying about saying or doing something wrong, too busy remembering how the kids laughed at him as a child, remembering all the names they called him. But Scott actually approaches him, and seems so genuine. It helps that he keeps coming back, even after Stiles talks up a storm and drags him around the campus. 

It’s nice, having someone at his side who actually seems to enjoy Stiles’ company, and doesn’t mind his chatter or constant movement. Stiles loves not being alone, and he decides that he would do anything for Scott, his first and best friend. 

~

There are at least twelve instances in the last year that Stiles was afraid to speak. Scott tried to kill him. Derek wanted him to cut off his arm. Derek looked dead and they were trapped in the school and how can he bring his father there to die? Lydia was bleeding on the ground and he was refusing the bite and Peter Hale was calling him a liar.

But his voice stayed steady.

Through some miracle, at the end of the day everyone who should be alive was alive, there was a tentative truce between the Argents and the four werewolves now inhabiting Beacon Hills, and Stiles was still a part of the pack, even though he was only human, and his stutter was still a secret. 

The insecurity was still there, like an itch in his brain that he could ignore but was always subtly aware of. Because Derek was an alpha, Scott, Lydia, and Jackson are werewolves, Allison was a badass hunter, and Lydia was also a genius. So he enjoyed their time together with the mentality that eventually it would all be over, because surely they’d figure out that he was just dead weight to them. The thought made him sad, though. Scott had been his best friend for years, and Stiles had finally matured to the point that he realized that he loved Lydia like a sister and she even loved him back the same way, and Jackson’s bullying had developed an air of fondness around it, and Derek… well, Derek probably still wanted to kill him, but he didn’t so that had to count for something.

Anything.

Stiles kept smiling, and hoped that time would move a little slower. Just this once.

~

Sometimes Stiles looked at Derek, and when he looked away the rest of the pack looked at him with exasperation. He wondered if they were getting tired of him.

~

Stiles could feel it as soon as he woke up. 

It all came down to bad timing, really. _Of course_ Stiles would get in a fight with the pack right before they got attacked by a rogue omega right before the anniversary of his mother’s death. Honestly, he shouldn’t even be surprised. 

It was the day before her anniversary, and Stiles had been more chatty than usual, when Jackson had started making comments about how Stiles would be more useful if he could shut up now and then, which lead to a heated argument with the pack making fun of Stiles’ role in the pack and none of them realizing that even if their insults were jokes, Stiles’ attempts to defend himself were real. 

Stiles’ hands were shaking ever so slightly and he thought _This is it, they don’t want me anymore_ when Derek suddenly jumped up and yelled at them all to get outside. Once there, they had barely seconds to question him before a deranged looking, half wolfed-out werewolf came flying through the trees, launching himself at Derek. He wasn’t an alpha, but the newcomer was practically feral, all claws and teeth and rabid, mindless assault. It took all four wolves and both humans to bring him down so that Derek could snap his neck. Once inside and dressing the various scratches and bruises that Stiles and Allison had received, Derek explained that the omega was probably not one by choice, and had most likely gone insane from it. He told them that the stranger had probably caught Derek’s scent and thought that if he could become an alpha himself he would be a part of a pack again.

Attempted murder aside, Stiles felt a stab of sympathy. He knew what it was like to feel like you would do anything to not be alone. 

The next morning Stiles wakes up and stares at the ceiling, and the pack doesn’t need him and he had watched someone die from loneliness and his dad had requested a double shift for the day and his mother has been dead for eight years and his tongue feels wrong in his mouth and he knows. 

So when his alarm sounds, he hits the off button, letting his arm fall limp over the side of the bed. Minutes tick by. Hours. First period comes and goes. His phone rings and he lets it go to voice mail. It rings again. And again. When he finally manages to pull himself out of bed he has seven missed calls and twelve texts. Sending a short message to Scott just saying he is sick, he then gets dressed because for some reason he feels like he should. Once in jeans and a t-shirt, he walks sluggishly downstairs to eat a bowl of cereal he doesn’t even taste. He ignores four more calls. He returns to his room and sits on his bed with his knees bent and a pillow hugged to his chest, hiding his mouth behind it. 

And that is how Derek finds Stiles three hours later when he crawls through his bedroom window. Stiles hates that he is here, hates that the rest of the pack is almost definitely standing on the lawn below his window eavesdropping, hates that he can’t have secrets, hates his tongue and lips and teeth. 

Stiles doesn’t move, and Derek frowns as he looks him up and down. “You don’t look sick. Don’t smell it either.” The human turns his head a little, looking away from the alpha. This only causes him to scowl more. “Hey, are you listening to me? Why weren’t you at school today?” Stiles is stubbornly silent, and Derek’s short patience runs out. His eyes flash red and he is suddenly right in Stiles’ space, grabbing his arm harshly and pulling him almost off the bed. “Don’t ignore me, Stiles!”

But that is really all Stiles can take. And so he rolls onto his feet, wrenching his arm out of Derek’s grasp and pushing him away. “G-g-g-g-g-g-get out!”

Derek freezes, looking at him curiously. “What?”

“G-g-get out.” Stiles is shaking and his heart is pounding too hard and too fast. His chest feels tight and his face is flushed with embarrassment and Derek can smell the shame rolling off of him. Tears well up in his eyes but he doesn’t want to cry, he thinks it would make things infinitely worse. He thinks things are about to become infinitely worse. “J-just l-l-l-leave me al-l-lone.”

Stiles can feel himself falling apart at the seams, shaking and crumbling but Derek is completely still. His eyes are a bit wider and his face seems softer around the mouth and his voice sounds almost gentle when he finally speaks, “Stiles, do you have a stutter?”

That is all it takes for the dam to break. Stiles clenches his eyes shut and lets the tears fall as he just lets everything out, “Y-y-y-es! Ok? And I d-d-d-d-d-don’t need y-you to m-m-m-make f-fun of m-me. I kn-n-n-now it’s s-stupid, G-g-g-god I’m too r-r-retarded to even t-t-t-t-t-talk r-r-right.”

“Stiles-“

“S-s-so you can g-go ahead and l-l-l-l-l-l-laugh a-and t-tell me how p-p-p-pathetic I am-”

“Stiles!”

“c-c-c-cause I a-a-already know I a-am, and so you and the r-r-r-r-rest of the p-pack can just g-g-go and l-l-laugh all you w-want b-b-because-“

But before he can force the rest of the words out, he is cut off by Derek’s lips crashing into his, swallowing the string of self-loathing and shocking him to silence.

The kiss isn’t exactly gentle, but it isn’t harsh or dirty either. It is firm and sure and warm, with a hint of saltiness. Derek brings his hands up to cup Stiles’ face, his thumbs stroking his cheeks to softly wipe the tears away. After a few moments of hesitation, Stiles brings his own hands up to clutch shyly at Derek’s leather jacket.

When they finally pull apart, they rest their foreheads together and Derek looks into Stiles’ face while Stiles looks into Derek’s chest. The alpha’s hands drift down until they are wrapped loosely around Stiles’ biceps. “It’s alright,” he says, “No one’s going to make fun of you, okay?” His voice has a gruff edge to it that makes it sound like a promise.

Stiles swallows thickly, “B-b-but…” He stops, closing his eyes again, cheeks tinged red.

“Hey,” Derek pulls back enough that he can grab Stiles’ chin and force him to meet his gaze, “it doesn’t matter. You’re pack. And I know we complain when you talk a lot but, I don’t know,” he shrugs, eyes flicking away momentarily the only sign that he’s maybe a bit out of his comfort zone. He carries on anyway, “it’s gotten kind of comforting. I could listen to you talk all day.”

Despite himself, Stiles laughs. It’s a little watery, and there is still a slight tremor in his hands, like his fingers are stuttering, but it’s something and he lets Derek sit him down while he goes over to the window. Within seconds they are all piled in his room. Scott lies next to him on the bed, holding hands with Allison who is sitting cross-legged on the floor below him. Lydia situates herself on the bed so that Scott and Stiles can use her calves and thighs as a pillow, her fingers casually entwined with Stiles’. Jackson is sitting in the desk chair, occasionally kicking his legs out to roll from one side of the room to the other, purely out of boredom. For once, they are the ones filling the space with words, with anything and everything to make their friend feel better. It is an endless string of conversation as they tell Stiles about what happened at school and all the things they didn’t realize they needed him for and how they couldn’t wait for summer and they needed to discuss possibilities for some sort of pack bonding trip or something, and Stiles listens. He listens and smiles and laughs and lets them talk for him until he is ready. 

All the while, Derek stands off in the corner, watching fondly without taking part in the chatter. And that’s okay, Stiles thinks, because he’s Derek, and he is the tough, manly, alpha werewolf and he probably used up all his feelings for the year just calming Stiles down. 

But then, when night falls and the pack piles pillows and sleeping bags and blankets on the floor, and they all curl together, just as Stiles is falling asleep he feels Derek’s large, calloused fingers run through his hair, and he thinks that maybe he was wrong.

In the morning, the mass of bodies is woken by the rising sun. They have all shifted until Stiles is somehow wedged between Scott and Derek, with Allison next to Scott and Lydia and Jackson on either outside. Stiles blinks awake and finds himself looking into Derek’s eyes. He smiles.

“Thanks.”


End file.
